The ABCs of Love by Sarah Salway Read Free Book Online Page A

grandmother was small, she won a book for good attendance at her Sunday school. She kept it very carefully on a small pine shelf with the few books she had, and I was never allowed to look at any of them. For some reason, this shelf was in her bathroom.
    One day when I was staying with her, I crept up to the bathroom and read it. It was called
Freddy’s Little Sister
and was all about a boy who was forced to beg on the streets because his parents had died. He needed food to look after his little sister, who was all he had in the world, but no one gave him any money and everyone was horrible. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, Freddy’s little sister died. Then the book ended. I cried and cried and cried, and I wouldn’t talk to my grandmother all evening. Eventually, she hit me because she realized I had read her special book.
    If I had a brother like Freddy, my grandmother wouldn’t have done that. I told John about it, and he held me so close.
    See also Baked Beans; Breasts; Endings; Zest
    kitchen equipment
    John and I met through work. This is just one of the reasons we have to keep things quiet. In one of our newsletters, we ran a competition to find the top chambermaid for our client, who supplied cleaning materials to hotel chains. Third prize was a full range of nonstick saucepans. Because it wasn’t very important, Brian let me organize the photograph of the girl receiving her prize, and John came along to hand the pans over as a representative of the kitchen equipment company.
    It was a bit embarrassing because Maureen wasn’t as pleased with her prize as I thought she should be. She even complained about how she was going to get all the pans back home on the train with her to Leicester, which I have to admit was something we hadn’t thought of. Eventually, I got her a taxi to the station, and when we found she’d left the nine-inch frying pan behind, John said I could keep it, which was nicer than he should have been given the circumstances. I think it was his kindness I fell in love with first.
    When John rang me up at work the next week, he sounded nervous, as if I wouldn’t remember who he was. But I did. We arranged to go out for a drink that evening, and he said that if I’d forgotten what he looked like, I wasn’t to worry because he always went everywhere with a full set of saucepans and this was a fairly good distinguishing mark. I was a bit puzzled until I realized this was his sense of humor. What John didn’t know was that I’d asked the photographer to print out an extra copy of the pan presentation photograph and pinned it above my desk. Brian still thinks it’s because it’s the first job I’ve done by myself. He tells me he finds my enthusiasm refreshing.
    See also John; Liqueur Chocolates; Objects; Vacuuming

L
    lesbians
    Poor John. He has to put up with so much. He told me in strict secrecy that he thinks his wife might be a lesbian.
    Apparently, she and her women friends touch a lot, even in front of John. They call one another things like “doll” and “poppet” and “petal,” and they are always sending secret e-mails. When John comes in, Kate hides what she’s writing, so he knows it is probably about him. He has to pretend not to mind; otherwise, she’ll tease him.
    He said the worst thing is how these women are always laughing when they are together. John told me he hardly laughs anymore. It’s all work and duty as far as he’s concerned. That’s why he loves being with me. He can feel appreciated.
    He said Kate and her friends seem to care only about having fun. He honestly thinks that if it came down to it, she would choose her friends over him.
    “It’s not like you and Sally,” he said. “You’re like blokes. You can pick up and drop your friendship when there’s nothing better to do.”
    I tried to talk about this with Sally, but she said that Colin lives in hope of walking in and finding Sally and me in a delicate situation together. It is